The Department of Homeland Security’s immigration enforcement directorate captured but then turned loose 68,000 criminal aliens who were convicted of a crime in the United States, according to a Fox News Channel’s report on Monday regarding Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) research.

CIS, a public-interest watchdog group, reviewed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) documents that revealed the Obama DHS released 35 percent of convicted illegal aliens instead of deporting them back to their own countries. What’s more, this is all happening while President Obama, his minions and many in the news media tell Americans that he’s deported record numbers of illegal aliens.

“In 2013, ICE agents reported encountering 193,000 criminal aliens -- yet they targeted only 125,000 of these criminal aliens for deportation, letting off 68,000, or 35 percent of the total. The ICE field offices with the largest ratios of criminal releases were San Antonio, New York City, DC/Virginia, and Newark (N.J.),” according to the study by Jessica Vaughn, the Center’s director of policy studies.

The ICE numbers appear to fly in the face of the Obama sycophants’ claims that the administration’s main concerns are national security, public safety, and prosecution are paramount when in reality factors such as family ties, politics, and advocacy groups and voters appear more important than ridding the nation of criminal aliens who prey on U.S. citizens, according to media reports on the CIS study.

In fact, according to an Examiner report, “municipalities that offer illegal immigrants sanctuary have refused -- and continue to refuse -- to notify ICE, preferring to release convicted offenders back into American society.”

ICE defines a criminal as being someone who was convicted of a misdemeanor or felony that is not a traffic violation. What was shocking to many readers of the ICE/CIS report was the fact that traffic violations such as Driving Under the Influence of Alcohol or even vehicular manslaughter are not considered fitting of the definition of “criminal alien.”

“This... [is] more of the ‘wait until they kill, rape, beat or molest someone here in America, then we’ll deport them’ logic. Any victims want to step up to the plate so they can make sure an illegal alien becomes a “felon”, making him deportable under the Obama and Napolitano rules? Brilliant strategy. They say they’ll deport “gang members” as well. We all feel so much safer now. The illegal alien cheerleaders (Rep. Luis Gutierrez, etc.) will love this new strategy. Those of us who actually have to put our lives on the line and enforce the laws? Not so much,” according to a statement by National Border Patrol Council, Local 2544, that appeared in an Examiner news story.

The ICE documents examined by CIS researchers also revealed that the Obama administration deported a small number of the illegal aliens they arrested and detained.

“In 2013, ICE targeted only 195,000, or 25 percent, out of 722,000 potentially deportable aliens they encountered,” CIS’s Jessica Vaughn wrote. “Most of these aliens came to ICE’s attention after incarceration for a local arrest.”

“The CIS report also contains a breakdown per city of percentages of criminal aliens who were released back into the population. San Antonio’s 79 percent is the highest, where ICE encountered 36,228 criminal aliens and released 28,680 back into the general population in 2013. New York City’s 71 percent is next, where ICE agents encountered 7,571 criminal aliens and released 5,391 of them. Washington, D.C. follows that, with ICE agents encountering 8,688 criminal aliens and releasing 64 percent, or 5,558, of them into the public. Other cities with high percentages include Salt Lake City, Houston, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Newark, and Buffalo. Notably, many of these cities are not in border states, which means visa overstays and illegal aliens who crossed the border but migrated further inward are as much a problem as the actual U.S.-Mexico border in terms of stopping the flow and enforcing the law.

“Comments from top Administration officials, such as Attorney General [Eric] Holder’s claim that amnesty is a civil right, or Vice President [Joe] Biden’s claim that those here illegally are all US citizens (apparently including someone whose visa expired yesterday), demonstrate the administration’s increasing belief in an open borders policy the American public has always rejected.”

In what some called a shocking display of lawlessness, President Obama and his entourage in December visited with pro-illegal-alien activists who were on a hunger strike as part of a protest against the lack of enthusiasm for immigration reform in the Congress. Obama praised their dedication and encouraged them to fight on, according to a news story appearing in the Examiner.

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The High Plains Daily Leader and Southwest Daily Times are published Sunday through Friday and reaches homes throughout the Liberal, Kansas retail trade zone. The Leader & Times is the official newspaper of Seward County, USD No. 480, USD No. 483 and the cities of Liberal and Kismet. The Leader & Times is a member of the Liberal Chamber of Commerce, the Kansas Press Association, the National Newspaper Association and the Associated Press.

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